Friday, October 4, 2013

Alphabet Adventures: O is for Orchard

Fall has proven to be a great time to continue our adventures by giving us all new options. When we started our adventures I envisioned a summer day trip to the ocean but as the cool temps arrived our ocean trip turned into an orchard trip.

The Adventure

Every fall we enjoy picking apples as a family and a favorite spot is Windy Ridge Orchard. The orchard provides flavorful apples, amazing fall views, and lots of fun extras like farm animals, a playground, and sweet treats.

Before arriving we talked to Big Brother about what an orchard is, a place with lots of fruit trees. He remembered last year and couldn't wait to get to the apples.

Little Brother and Big Brother both enjoyed the wagon ride.

Mmm, Big Brother enjoys the first bites and Little Brother enjoyed his first tastes.

As we were there a little later in the season, a lot of the best apples were up high.

Of course, we also enjoyed some other elements of the orchard. We loved their fun photo cut outs and feeding the variety of farm animals. We sampled some delicious kettle corn (sadly, the amazing smelling donut line was just too long) and some fresh cider.

One of the best treats for Big Brother was the "cow" ride which loops through the orchard.

When we got home we read Picking Apples, Picking Pumpkins by Amy & Richard Hutchings.

The Project: O is for Octopus

O could have been for orange, either in a color collage or orange prints. But, although sounds haven't been the focus of our adventures, when I mentioned "orange" he told me he couldn't hear an /o/ sound in the word. Since we had also done orchard with the same /or/ sound at the beginning for orchard, I decided to switch it up last minute.

We have an octopus shaped massage tool which we decided to dip into orange paint.

Big Brother used it to see what different patterns it could make. First he tried making dot patterns.

Next he found he could turn it in order to make a large circle, or as he called it, "O."

After painting I couldn't resist playing on the octopus theme a little more. For dinner he had an octopus hot dog in an ocean of peas with apple waves. While we ate we listened to "An Octopus's Garden" by the Beatles.